# Gwendolyn Galsworth

Gwendolyn Galsworth is an American president/founder of Visual Thinking Inc. and also an author, researcher, teacher, consultant, publisher and leader in the field of visuality in the workplace and visual management. Her books have won multiple Shingo Prize awards in the Research and Professional Publication category, focusing on conceptualizing and codifying workplace visuality into a single, comprehensive framework of knowledge and know-how called the "visual workplace" of which visual management is a sub-set.
Galsworth was one of the ten original members of the Productivity Inc. team assembled by Norman Bodek in the early 1980s to establish that company as the premier resource for books and intelligence from Japan that documented and explained what was then called The Japanese Manufacturing Miracle, exemplified by the Toyota Production System.
She is a consultant, teacher, writer, speaker and broadcaster on the technologies of the visual workplace and business improvement.

## Early life and education

Gwendolyn Galsworth was born in upper New York State to a Russian mother, Geraldine, and Swiss father, Donato Galsworth. Raised in New Jersey, she graduated from Montclair State Teachers College. After teaching Latin in New Jersey, she started an acting career in New York, studying at the Gene Frankel Studio and performing in plays. Galsworth later traveled to Europe where she studied French at the Sorbonne, learned Italian, and acted in Paris and London. Returning to New York, Galsworth joined the experimental acting group, The Performance Group (Richard Schechner), and then traveled to Poland to study with experimental director, Jerzy Grotowski. This was followed by an invitation to audition for Peter Brook and his London-based National Repertory Theatre. She later enrolled in a Master’s Program/Hunter College in Special Education for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired. She planned to establish a theatre where deaf people performed not with the language of signing, such as the National Theatre of the Deaf (NTD) promoted, but through a unique language of physical and sound images that deaf actors would discover from their own expressive resources. Galsworth received both her Masters and PhD in Education and Statistics from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.

## Productivity, Inc.

A chance connection led her to Productivity, Inc. and the new offices of Norman Bodek where she became head of Training, Consulting, and Development. Her position brought her into working relationships with Japanese master practitioners, including the co-architect of the Toyota Production System, Shigeo Shingo; head of the Shingijutsu Consulting Group, Yoshiki Iwata; Sumitomo’s Ryuji Fukuda, as well as Seiichi Nakajima and Hiroyuki Hirano. During this period, Galsworth led study missions to Japan and worked with Dr. Fukuda to develop his CEDAC methodology into a process that western companies could use. Shortly before his death, Dr. Shingo asked Galsworth to pursue the development of his Poka-Yoke/Zero Defect paradigm into a more complete and western-oriented improvement methodology.

## Quality Methods International Inc.

Leaving Productivity, Galsworth formed Quality Methods International in order to specialize in the research, articulation, and deployment of workplace visuality as a single, sustainable improvement framework. Since then, she has continued to focus on codifying a range of principles and practices, resulting in an array of methods called the technologies of the visual workplace. During this same decade, Galsworth became a Malcolm Baldrige Award Examiner and an examiner for The Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence. She remained a Shingo Examiner. Later, the Shingo Prize Office at Utah State University invited Galsworth to create an online course on the visual workplace as part of its Shingo Prize Online Curriculum in Operational Excellence.

## Visual Thinking Inc.

Galsworth set up the Visual-Lean Institute in 2005 into order to train and certify internal and external trainers/consultants in core visual methods. In 2010, she changed the name of her company to Visual Thinking Inc. For seven years, she hosted a weekly radio show on VoiceAmerica, originally named “The Visual Workplace;” later “Visual Workplace Radio”.

## Core Methods of a Visual Transformation

Galsworth's contribution to the field of operational excellence is her discovery and codification of a concepts, principles, and methods that allow an organization to systematically convert to a fully-functional visual enterprise and create a workplace that speaks, whether in manufacturing, healthcare, or offices. These methods (aka., "categories of visual function") are: Work That Makes Sense/Operator-Lead Visuality; Visual Displays/Management By Sight; Visual Metrics/Monitor versus Drive; The 10 Doorways: Creating a Workforce of Visual Thinkers; Visual Leadership/Deciding and Driving Visually; The Vital Seven/Soft Skills for the Highly-Effective Trainer and Coach; The Visual-Lean Office; The Visual Machine/Let Equipment Speak; The Seven Start-Up Requirements for a Successful Visual Conversion; Visual Problem-Solving for Chronic, Complex, Costly Problems; Mistake-Proofing for Perfect Quality; and High-Performance Work Systems.

## Awards

* 2024: Inducted into the Shingo Academy as lifetime member
* 2011: Awarded the Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award for her book, Work That Makes Sense: Operator-led Visuality
* 2006: Awarded the Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award for her book, Visual Workplace/Visual Thinking: Creating Enterprise Excellence Through the Technologies of the Visual Workplace

## Books by Galsworth

Galsworth has written seven books on workplace visuality and other core improvement methods. Her first book, Smart Simple Design: Using Variety Effectiveness to Reduce Total Cost and Maximize Customer Selection (John Wiley, 1994) focused on the importance of simplifying a company’s product architecture in order to de-complicate the enterprise, end-to-end (“all costs adhere to the part”). A second edition of this title was released in 2014, newly titled Smart Simple Design/Reloaded: Variety Effectiveness and the Cost of Complexity (Visual-Lean Enterprise Press).
In 1997 Galsworth wrote her first book on workplace visuality, titled Visual Systems: Harnessing the Power of the Visual Workplace (Amacom). This was followed in 1998 by Visual Workplace/Visual Order Associate Handbook and Visual Workplace/Visual Order Instructor Guide (Visual-Lean Enterprise Press).
In 2005, she released Visual Workplace/Visual Thinking: Creating Enterprise Excellence Through the Technologies of the Visual Workplace (Visual-Lean Enterprise Press), with her second edition of this book published by Productivity Press/Routledge Press in 2017. Her seventh book, Work That Makes Sense: Operator-Led Visuality, was published in 2011 (Visual-Lean Enterprise Press), with a second edition published by Productivity Press/Routledge Press in 2022. Visual Workplace/Visual Thinking and Work That Makes Sense are both recipients of the Shingo Publication Award.